Hmmm... KDE developers CAN develop using beta versions (or how could this ifdef get into the code), but they CAN NOT test using them ;)... I agree with you completely that it would be wise on developers' hand not to use code which is dependent on future Qt versions and their features. But what happend is that the code DOES depend on them - and i regard this as a bug.
Anyway, my whole point is this: there ARE bugs in the distributed packages, which are due to haste. I fully understand that some bugs cannot be eliminated without re-designing and/or re-hacking a lot of code. But bugs such as mentioned can be stamped out in no time (well, less time than it takes to answer my posts ;) ). And it's a pity that such bugs made it into the "stable" release...

There has been a nearly half a year freeze, two betas and one release candidate already, and the system's stability as well as the balance between quickly fixable serious bugs and the kind of newly reported bug was showing that it was a pretty fine time to do a release.

If you think software with bugs should never be released or even *gasp* used you might prefer stopping using computers altogether.

2. IMHO, making code dependent on future Qt versions is not a good idea. And Qt 3.3 was still beta at the point where KDE-3.2 was released.
1. Is the end-user supposed to have autoconf installed just to run configure? And BTW it does not work with 2.53 either which is greater than 2.5, isn't it?

Again, i'm not asking for workarounds - it was not hard for me to find them. I'm saying that "Fast turnaround between RC1 and actual release" lead to simple glitches. Where the turnaround not so fast, there would be more time for testing QA and the release would be better polished.

I'm impressed by everything i've seen in the new version of kde.. has anyone however got the same problem as me, in that as soon as any item appear in the recently used application list at the top of the kmenu, the kmenu become several pixels too thin?

There's packages for woody distributed via kde.org.
I did install these packages last night, they work well. Except that I can't choose plastik style? In which package is it supposed to be?
apt-cache search plastik didn't find anything..

Can some one advise me on where to grap Mandrake 9.2 binaries? I'd also like to know whether kde 3.1.4 and the latest kde can co-exist on the same machine...or does the newly installed one overwrite the old one?

I downloaded it and on install I selected the first option which is to delete OS, and ltitle did I know that it would delete Windows XP, Xandros, and my BACKUP partition! Damn this OS jsut has to fuck you up like this and not even a warning that it would not delete one OS, but rather all of them and also once you clcik the button you are done for, no confirmation request like in SUSE so if someone accidentally selects the wrong one, bye bye.

Now I have lost most of my data forever and just setting up everything again will take a few weekends. If your wodnering why I didn't select the other options, it's because they didnt work, couldn't resize or anything.

I never want to touch this piece of shit for at least 2 years, I'm aware it's alpha and it could be super buggy for all I know but at least it can be super buggy on its own partition!

Mmm, sounds pretty typical of someone how dosnt grasp the concept of what Alpha means, and what should be done before installing an Alpha like actually reading the all the arnings on the website and talking with the development team. Brilliant genius.

It's not his machine. It's a problem in his setup, possibly fam related.

People here's a clue... if launching an application brings your light speed workstation to it's knees you can bet that the developers would not be releasing it and it's another problem related to your set up.

I've got a similar problem using Debian stable with a backported X Version 4.2.1.1. I think i'll try downgrading and see how it goes. Another problem i run into was that KDE caused a relocation error with my backported version of libfreetype6 (kdeinit: relocation error: /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3: undefined symbol: FT_Seek_Stream) and had to downgrade it to the woody version. Any hints on what might be the problem with X cpu usage?
Cheers,
Cirrus